Controversial I know, and I do occasionally feel like some ancient fisherman, standing on deck looking out over flat water and blue skies, warning that there's a storm coming.

But at least I am not alone, smart people such as Chad Sowash, Jim Durbin, Martyn Redstone , Alexander Chukovski and Jacob Sten Madsen to name a few, are also talking about this kind of stuff to various degrees, plus I do have a half decent track record at spotting these things ahead of time, BUT, I have also been wrong before.

My hope is that by taking action now the Job board industry can weather this storm, but if nothing changes we are in trouble, especially when combined with the current economic headwinds that are being experienced.

So what are the signs of the storm ahead?

We know that job seekers are adopting AI tools rapidly, using them to write CVs, cover letters, and tailor applications. A recent survey by Arctic Shores found that 70% of graduates intended to use AI as part of applying for jobs.

We know these tools are getting more sophisticated by the day... listening in on interviews to provide real-time answers, completing assessments and automatically applying for jobs.

This presents all sorts of problems for employers, but what does it mean for the job advertising industry?

In the simplest of terms, it's a question of economics, specifically supply and demand.

An article in Wired this week discussed an automated AI tool that was being used to apply for 5,000 jobs in a day. If these tools are widely adopted then we can expect a supply of applications that will look more like a flood.

Admittedly the tools response rate was terrible, with only 0.5% of applications leading to an interview. This compares to historical norms of somewhere between 10% and 20%. So to get 5 interviews, the average needed to find a job would require 1,000 applications rather than the current 25-50. (I would argue it's actually worse than that, as a lot of these jobs will not be suitable or of interest).

Why might someone use such a tool when it has such a low success rate I hear you ask, the answer is it's far easier to click go once and let the tech do its thing, than manually search for and complete 25 job applications, most of which you will never hear back from.

In reality, not everyone will use these tools, but enough will, and we are already starting to see an increase in response rates.

But how big will the impact on advertising be? Well, let's do the maths…..Assuming an employer's advertising budget per job stays the same, but the number of applications increases x20 (never mind x50), then the cost per application and per click will drop by over 95%. Or to put it another way, to get the same number of applications as they do now, employers would cut spend per job by 95%.

And if an employer's tech stacks can’t cope with the volume or are unable to find the best applicants in the flood of generic AI-tailored applications, then what will probably happen is that they will rapidly cut their entire ad spend in an attempt to cope with the deluge.

Even if I am miles out and the effect is much less, say a 50% drop, this is still catastrophic for most job boards and Ad agencies.

So how, as an industry, can we prepare?

We need to shift away from relying on advertising revenue, create products that remove unsuitable candidates (killer questions are not going to do it), and shift to a sourcing model rather than an open advertising one so that we can give recruiters the applicants who are actually qualified to do the job, rather than them trying to sift through 1,000s of applications from people who are not.

We need to do this whilst maintaining high levels of automation, to make it easy, low cost and resource efficient.

We need to shift to a commercial model based around a cost per qualified candidate rather than clicks and applies.

We need to work together to facilitate this shift.

We need to sit down in our businesses, discuss and make a plan for all these eventualities.

At CV Wallet / Resume Wallet, we have created a Talent Marketplace, and are starting to partner with job boards and other Talent Acquisition technology providers to help provide alternative revenue streams and to deliver qualified applicants for recruiters to help counter the threat that the industry faces, but that's one for another article.